


Saving Amélie

by zombiefeathers



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Brainwashing, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Overwatch Agent Widowmaker | Amélie Lacroix, Pre-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-29 19:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10860333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombiefeathers/pseuds/zombiefeathers
Summary: It's gay I promise





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Angela saw her was at Gabe’s Halloween party a few years ago, hanging on her husband-to-be’s arm. Gérard invited his fiancée to headquarters to formally introduce her to his squadmates, despite Jack’s continued protests. Gérard had insisted – his wife-to-be had been targeted by their opponents in the war, and could be trusted. She needed to know where she could find safety whenever she might need it. And, besides, he didn’t want there to be any secrets in their relationship, not when they were getting married so soon and the two were so in love.

Personally, Angela didn’t see a problem with Gérard introducing the love of his life to the people he trusted. She thought it was cute, really, like he wanted her to be a part of this family he’d found in Overwatch. It was something she thought to do with her own wife, when her time came.

But the night of the party, Mercy took one look at Gérard’s fiancée and knew she was a goner. She spent the night drinking punch away from the main party, stewing in her own jealousy and bitterness for the happiness of her straight friend, stealing glances at his girlfriend and wishing she was drunk or speaking to a beautiful woman or both.

She heard the clicking of heels on tile and looked up to see the woman break away from the crowd and walk purposefully toward her spot on the couch. Angela took one look into the empty bowl beside her and then back at the French woman. “Sorry, but there’s no more punch over here.”

“You are Doctor Ziegler, yes?”

Not waiting for a response or invitation, she took a seat next to Mercy on the couch. “It’s an honor to meet you. I’ve been looking forward to speaking with you all night.”

“The honor is mine, Madame Lacroix. Tales of your dancing have reached far beyond the walls of Paris.”

“You flatter me, Doctor. Do not trivialize your own achievements. The research you’ve done has revolutionized medical technology worldwide. You’ve saved a lot of lives, my fiancé’s included.”

Right. Gérard. Angela had forgotten about him. She’d swallowed hard around the lump in her throat.

“You’re a real hero, Doctor.”

“Please. Call me Angela.”

“Angela? That’s a beautiful name. Fitting, too. I am Amélie.”

“I like it. It’s… musical.”

Amélie’s eyes, molten gold, searched Angela’s face for something neither woman could quite name. She smiled when she found it, soft lips painted red framing a row of teeth glittering like pearls. “That’s a nice compliment, coming from a woman as beautiful as yourself.”

Mercy felt her face get hot. She pretended to sip from her long-empty cup to hide her blush. She’s marrying your boss. She’s straight. She’s just being polite. What the hell am I thinking?

She excused herself before the conversation could get any gayer.

After that, she never found the opportunity to speak with her without Gérard present. Which was probably for the best, because she never quite got over the feeling of getting punched repeatedly in the stomach every time Amélie walked into a room, and the guilt that accompanied it. She went to their wedding and comforted Reinhardt as he sobbed into his hands beside her, but she could not stop imagining herself walking down the aisle instead of Gérard. Later in the month, Angela found herself excusing herself to the bathroom to avoid Gérard’s playfully vague descriptions of his honeymoon.

She was not in love, per se – she barely knew the woman, after all. She was just projecting her own desire for a relationship onto a beautiful woman she could not have because her line of work made it very difficult for her to meet other women she might be romantically interested in. She only liked her because she was a pretty woman she knew outside of Overwatch who did not carry the risk of dying under her care. That was all. She thought. She was sure.

The only person who took Amélie’s abduction worse than Angela did was Gérard, but, where Mercy threw herself headfirst into the efforts to find Amélie, it was like Talon had taken Gérard, too. After reporting Amélie’s disappearance to Overwatch, he locked himself in their house and refused to see anyone except Jack. Even then, Jack couldn’t coax him to eat or sleep or do anything other than repeatedly condemn Talon in the darkness of the room he used to share with his wife.

On the thirteenth night, Jack reported that, just as he was about to leave, Gérard dug his dirty fingernails into his bicep and begged him to wait.

“We better get those bastards for this,” he croaked. “It was Talon. It had to be Talon. I know it was.”

“I know, Gérard. We will. But you need to rest, we can’t let them take you fr-“

“No. I don’t care what happens to me, Jack, just promise… promise me that we won’t lose her forever. If we- when we get her back, we’re never letting them get to her again. Promise me.”

“He made me promise,” Jack was saying to the rest of the Overwatch operatives. “He wouldn’t let me go.”

Captain Amari was the one who broke the heavy silence that followed his report. “So did you?”

“I had no other choice-“

Ana slammed her hands on the table in front of her, snapping everyone out of their state of shock. “You’re a damn fool, Morrison. You can’t make those kinds of promises. You can’t keep them. Gabe has been on this case for two weeks now and there’s no sign of her, no trail to follow.”  
She was met with silence.

“I can’t believe you could be so naïve as to promise the safety of a civilian to anyone. I can’t believe you willingly undermined the danger of a terrorist organization to your military superior.”

“Ana, he-“

“I don’t care if you just wanted to make him feel better. You allowed emotion to cloud your judgement. You bleeding heart, that will be your downfall. We need to face the facts. We will not find Amélie Lacroix until Talon wants us to find her. By then, it will be too late.”

Her eyes swept the room, lingering on a humiliated Jack and a quietly weeping Reinhardt. Her voice shook.

“We are already too late. Dismissed.”

 

Mercy found Amélie the day after, passed out in the woods somewhere outside Champagne. Her body was clean and she was uninjured, but still, Mercy initiated a healing stream and tearfully called out for Gabriel to help her move the body. He arrived in an instant, seemingly appearing from nowhere.

“Shit. You really found her.”

“Help me pick her up.”

“Yeah, about that. I, uh, can’t. You know, I’ve been throwing Fareeha around a little too much. Got bad arms or whatever. I’ll go get Rein-”

“ _Schiesse_ , Reyes. Don’t bother. Hold my staff.”

Mercy pushed her staff into Gabe’s arms and bent over to pick up Amélie bridal style. She felt the warmth of the woman’s skin seep through her gloves, and found comfort in it rather than suspicion. Ana was wrong. She could be saved yet.

“She’s a ballerina, you lazy ox,” Mercy mumbled. “Light as a feather. Let’s move.”

“You really are an angel, aren’t you, Doc?”

“Call a copter, _Feigling_.”

 

Captain Amari called Mercy into her office after she had taken Amélie in for her second visit to Overwatch Headquarters. She sat at her desk, looking down at her picture of Fareeha standing with the rest of Overwatch. Mercy hovered at the doorframe, waiting for a response.

“Captain Amari?”

“What did you find, Doctor?”

“Results from the tests all return negative. There’s nothing wrong with her physically. No signs of brain damage or internal injury, no evidence of a struggle. Other than a gap in her memory from the last two weeks, she’s perfect.” Wait, that sounds weird. “I- perfect condition, I mean.”

Ana raised an eyebrow at Angela, but did not press her about her unnecessary correction. “Amnesia? That’s very convenient.”

“Yes. But there’s nothing I can do about that. Even so, I believe she is healthy and ready to be released. She wants to see Gérard, and I… I don’t want to be the one to stand between true love.”

Ana was quiet for a long time. “How long do you think she’d been out there before you found her, do you think, Angela?”

“Not long. Her body was clean, not caked in dirt. There didn’t seem to be any damage to her clothes, no animal tracks nearby, and her skin… her skin was still warm.”

“Convenient.” There was another long pause. “Thank you, Angela. Get some rest. Dismissed.”

 

Two weeks later, Gérard returned to work. He sat having lunch with Jack and McCree in the main room, joking about the weather and how Jack looks at Gabe the same way Gabe looks at his sewing supplies. Fareeha sat drawing on the floor beside them, using only a black crayon.

“Why, Miss Amari, you’re quite the little artist,” crooned Gérard.

“Mhm.” Fareeha was too busy with more important matters to justify the loud French man with a real response.

“May I ask what you’re drawing?”

“No.”

“Ice cold, kiddo,” laughed Gabriel, walking into the room. “Why don’t you go on and show Mr. Lacroix your art?”

“’Cause it’s for you.”

“Adorable,” said Jack. “At least somebody around here likes you, Gabe.”

Gabe ignored him. “Well, can you show me, then?”

“Gimme… just… a second… done.”

Fareeha stood up and handed Gabe her paper, folded slightly so none of the men at the table could see it.

“Wow, Fa, you really went at it with the black here… is it… a skeleton in a trenchcoat?”

“It’s your superhero outfit.”

The table of men exploded into snickering.

“I love it. Thank you so much.” He scooped her up into a hug and spun her around as she giggled wildly.

As he spun, he noticed the blur of a woman with dark skin and long black hair enter the room.

“Oh, Ana,” he called without slowing, “watch out for Fareeha’s feet. Actually, shit, kiddo, you’re kinda heavy, let me put you down.” He set down the girl and straightened to meet the unfamiliar golden glow of two eyes that did not belong to his captain.

“Amélie? What's wrong?” Gérard's chair scraped against the floor, panic apparent in his voice, and he strode to meet his love with open arms.

The sound of her patient’s name summoned Angela into the room. She watched as Amélie raised the gun, as Gabe noticed it first and dove behind the couch with Fareeha, as Jack and McCree stood from their lunch drawing their weapons, too late, as Amélie emptied three shots into her husband’s head.


	2. Chapter 2

Jack vaulted over the lunch table and dove to meet Gérard’s body where it had crumpled. He cradled his friend and coworker, whispering to him urgently, tearfully, desperately,

“Don’t do this to me man, please don’t do this to me, please-“

McCree watched dumbstruck as the woman before him, once a familiar and comforting presence, now a stranger, pulled a second gun from her hilt. Blind panic overtook him and he feared she would kill him where he stood, a stupid, naïve teenager who had dressed like a cowboy every Halloween since birth.

_I haven’t even gotten to dress up as an astronaut yet._

Instead, Amélie pointed the second gun to the sky and pulled the trigger, and Jesse’s panic rose as something worse than a bullet was ejected from the weapon – a grappling hook. He was letting her get away.

“You idiots!” cried Angela as she fumbled with the locker that secured her gun and her wings. “Stop her!”

She barely heard the thud of two bodies colliding in midair over the sound of the blood pounding in her ears, the gruff, throaty grunt that followed, the sounds of a woman struggling.

“Get off me, you-”

“Angela!” Gabe’s voice, far away.

Who had replaced her fingers with sausages? _You’re a surgeon, dammit. What the hell is wrong with you?_

“I could use a hand here, Doc!”

“Fuck it!”

Mercy abandoned her wings to the impassable door and vaulted over the rails at the top of the steps, down to the main area where Gerard lay bleeding.

_No, lay dead._

Gabriel had crumpled on the floor beside the intruder, who was skillfully resetting her grappling gun in another attempt to make her exit. She noticed the doctor’s swift approach and raised her pistol again at her adversary. Mercy dove toward Jesse, peeled the gun out of his hands, and shot at Amélie’s, ignoring the pain of the rough, unfamiliar trigger and harsh recoil. She heard the satisfying clatter of a gun fall to the floor. Amélie shot her grapple gun back at the ceiling and started to ascend, but before she could get far, Mercy shot wildly at the ceiling and sent the woman crashing to the ground. Then as Amélie slowly got to her feet, scanning the room for another escape route, Angela threw Jesse’s gun at Amélie’s head and lunged.

 

Reinhardt entered the room with a tray of donuts, warm from the oven, and stumbled upon a scene he could not explain. He heard the noises of a struggle and craned his neck to see behind the table in the center of the room, and he saw Mercy and Amélie writhing like snakes on the floor.

“ _Ich bin von Einzeller umzingelt!_ Help me!”

 

“I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Fix him.”

“Where is Captain Amari? Where-“

“Angela, there must be something you can do.”

“Not even I can bring back the dead, Jack.”

This was not the conversation she wanted to be having, or the tone she wanted to be having it in, or the place, or the time, and certainly not the person. A dead man lay on her operating table, and his best friend stood holding his hand like he was waiting for him to wake up.

She needed a fucking nap.

“He just got married. He can’t be dead.”

“Death comes for us all, Morrison. We do not choose when we go.”

“Can’t you wave around your magic wand or something and make it all better?”

Angela blinked. If she had known the nanite technology she poured her whole life into was going to be simplified to a mere “magic wand”, she would not have put her name on the discovery. “That’s not how it works.”

“Then how _does_ it work?”

“I don’t kn- I don’t want to discuss this with you. What we should be discussing is grief counselling and the fact that Overwatch has enough money to plunge into arms research but not enough to invest in psychiatric services.”

“Are you calling me crazy?”

“That is not the word I used.”

“Why aren’t you doing more? Why aren’t you more upset? He was your friend too. Is it because he married Amélie? Is that why-“

“Jack, if you really want to crucify a scapegoat for the great crime of murdering an agent who knew the consequences of entering this line of work, look to the people who put the gun in the hands of his young wife. And if you really want a hero to save you from your sorry loneliness-“ Mercy pushed her Caduceus Staff roughly into Morrison’s stomach, leaning in close to his ear- “I suggest you stop putting your esteemed Dr. Ziegler on a pedestal and look inward. I don’t have time to mend your broken heart.”

Mercy left the room without another word, leaving two dead silent men in her wake.

As Angela turned a corner down the hall to the ward where Jesse and Gabe were being held, she bumped into a mousy-haired young woman vibrating with familiar anxiety and concern.

“Hello, Doctor.”

“Go home, Lena.”

“I came as soon as I heard. How’re you holding up?”

“I said, go home.”

“But I want to make sure everyone is all right. Where’s-“

“Gérard is dead.”

Lena’s brown eyes went wide with shock. Angela felt an echo of guilt watching the light of naivete leave them, the fog of fear set in, but the feeling was far away, muffled. She was going to have to learn eventually that agents die. Let her learn it now. But, just, somewhere else.

“Oh.”

“Mhm.”

“How is Amélie taking it?”

“Where is Captain Amari?”

“The Captain? She’s been holed up in her office, I think, with Reinhardt and Winston.”

“I need you to pass her a message. Tell her that the team needs grief counselling, and tell her that I am not a psychiatrist and it is _unethical_ for the both of us to force me into that role at this time. Or, you know, ever. And tell her I’m going to go see Jesse and Gabriel now and I would like to speak with her after I finish there, before I have to meet with Madame Lacroix.”

“Uhh… I don’t think-”

“It is urgent. Go now. That’s an _order_.”

“Oh! Yes ma’am! Right away!”

 

Mercy walked into the hospital room where Jesse was staying. He was sitting on the edge of the single bed facing away from the door, looking out the window next to the armchair where Gabe was sitting. The Blackwatch commander saw her first and stood from his seat with a grin. Jesse looked up at him, then followed his gaze to the door. He swung his legs over the other side so that he could face Angela.

“How are ya, Doc?”

“I have told you a hundred thousand times, Gabe, not to call me that. Jesse, tell me where you keep your cigarettes.”

McCree started kicking his legs against the side of his seat and blushed bright red. His voice faltered. “I don’t quite know what you’re referring to, ma’am. I, uh- I don’t use those anymore.”

“Cut the shit. I need a smoke.”

Jesse glanced back at Gabe, who was standing behind him with his arms crossed. Though Gabe was looking determinedly around the room, humming to himself, Jesse seemed to sweat under the weight of his presence. “Well, I dunno, Miss Zie-”

“ _Now_.”

The severe tone of Angela’s voice seemed to inspire him to reach into his coat and pull a cigarette from a pack hidden in an inner coat pocket. She pressed the cigarette to her lips and shut her eyes as Jesse reached back into his coat and lit her up. Gabe watched in silence.

“You seem to be taking this well, Gabe,” Angela said after a few minutes.

He shrugged. “We’re soldiers. It happens.”

Mercy nodded at the boy on the bed. “How is he?”

“I’m right here ma’am. You can ask me yourself.”

Gabe ignored the outburst. “He’s been better. I’d like him to see a shrink before the week is out but God knows if Jack can get his shit together and throw me the funds.” He pauses. “That’s not fair. He’s a Commander, not a Girl Scout. And he’s going through a lot right now.”

Mercy snorted. “He’s not the only one.”

“How are you, Angela?”

She doesn’t respond.

“Angela?”

“Fine.”

“Come on, Angie. You just watched your boss get murdered by his own wife, the woman you lo-”

“I don’t love her,” Mercy snapped. “I want to make that clear. I hardly know the woman, I don’t pretend to love her.”

“You thought very highly of her, and you underestimated her. I think we all did. Gérard more than any of us, and he paid the price. It’s rough, and we don’t have time to process it. You can’t be fine.”

“I don’t have any other choice.”

“You don’t?”

“What am I supposed to do, Gabriel? Quit? Take a vacation? And then what? Who will follow your fragile egos and their bodies into battle? Who will find out what happened to Amélie? And even if you could replace me, if you found the money to hire another scientist of my skill who isn’t batshit crazy, even then, my work follows me wherever I go. There is a target on my back I cannot wash away in my mother’s guest shower or on the shores of Hawaii.”

“That’s not what I meant. Just give yourself time to process.”

Angela straightened and turned to leave, putting her cigarette out on the metal counter near the door.

“That shit’s gonna kill you, Doc,” Gabe said.

“We’re soldiers, Gabe. If this is what gets to me in the end, that would truly be a miracle.”


End file.
